Well it's quite simple in fact. With the outrageous weights we've put on all the links going out of CUNYVM and PSUVM, DEARN is much closer to NIHCU than UGA. Therefore UGA rerouted Roger's subscription to the "best possible" node, DEARN. The term "service area" refers to a parameter in the list header which can be used to cause LISTSERV to reject all subscriptions from people not in the defined service area, regardless of node distances, of whether you're the nearest server or not, etc. It's just a "I don't want any people not from (list of nodes, countries, etc) at all on my server, period." Its main use is to pro- tect local PUBLIC lists against intrusion by people not from the local nodes. For example I can define a list of all FRECP11 users interested in discussing our local TDT package (a SCRIPT/DCF user interface in french), let anybody subscribe to it without my having to confirm the subscription, and yet avoid the list being plagued with hundreds of weenies from everywhere in the world -- the kind of weenies who issue a LIST command and then (try to) subscribe to ALL your lists. I've already received about 20 requests for subscription to our local INF-L list which lists... all the "general CS" department students in the school who have access to the mainframe!! That was before I changed it to "Subscription= Closed". The only sensible solution would be to manage to modify the link weights table to have everybody stay on his side of the pond... and I'm afraid this is a real challenge... Eric